The World’s Not Over!

Well, looks like the world didn’t end on us, so that means life–and business–must go on! With that said, let’s take a look back on 2012 before talking about what’s to come in 2013.

2012 has definitely been a good year for us here at MangaGamer. The number of fans registered with our website has continued to grow, not to mention our overall sales and income. And that’s just on the digital side of our business. Between this increase in overall sales and the expansion of our hard-copy lineup, a lot more of our games are starting to turn a profit, and that means more opportunities for us in the coming years. Speaking of which, guess what the 10 most popular games were in total overall 2012 sales on our website? (Note: This ranking does not include any hard-copy sales.)

This year we were proud to add DEARDROPS, Harem Party, Koihime Musou, We Love Master, and Shuffle to our list of hard-copy offerings. If you haven’t ordered a copy for your collection yet, then what are you waiting for? We really hope everyone enjoys the pick set that’s printed with DEARDROPS. It took us a lot of work getting everything arranged for that to happen. Naturally, we plan to continue expanding our hard-copy offerings in the new year as well, and we hope you’ll enjoy them too!

Speaking of hard copies, thanks to our expanded lineup of hard-copies, we’ve been able to start attending more conventions all across America as a result. This year in 2012 we were able to attend Sakuracon and New York Comic Con in addition to our regular appearances at Anime Expo and Otakon, sales on the hard copies has certainly been doing well at all of them, so you can expect to see us at even more conventions in 2013! Which ones? Well, that’ll be listed in our post looking forward.

That being said, our hard-copy lineup and convention coverage isn’t the only thing that’s expanded in 2012. As our lineup has started bringing in more sales, we’ve been able to expand our staff and its capabilities quite a bit towards the end of the year. One of the biggest new additions to our staff in 2012 has been our new programmer, Doddler. Some of you may have read his previous post explaining a little of what he’s started doing for us, but his addition has definitely opened up a lot of new opportunities for us.

Though some of our partners in Japan such as Nexton, minori, and OVERDRIVE still insist on handling all the scripting in their games, his addition to our staff means that we now have someone focused on MangaGamer who can handle the scripting, porting, and bug-fixing of our new games for every company who doesn’t want to do it themselves. What this means for us, is that more companies are getting interested in localization since they don’t have to divert resources for it and that we can bring you those games much faster. (In fact, we just finished signing the contract with one such new company shortly before the end of the year!)

In addition to that, we’ve also added several new translators to our lineup. One of our newest to join me (Kouryuu) and Kou, is DragonSamurai55. Formerly part of the NNL team, he’s continued working with us after ef, helping to finish off the translation for Harukoi Otome as well as producing the translation for Slave Witch April and Tick Tack for us. We already have more titles in queue for him to work on too! In addition to him, we’ve also added three other translators to help keep production lines moving. The fifth translator we’ve added to our staff this year only recently joined us in the past few months, but he goes by Yukkuri S. online. He’s done previous work with Kitty Media and Atlus, so we hope our fans will look forward to seeing his work too. But with all these new translators, who’s working on what now? Well, we certainly have plenty lined up for them, but that’s for another post.

As the year comes to a close we’re even starting to try out two new potential employees to help keep our localizations running smoothly as we continue to expand our operations in the coming year.

So, looking back, we can see that there’s been a lot of growth and expansion here at MangaGamer in 2012, and we hope to continue seeing even more as we head into the new year!

^ This Sadly. Even though the story’s good and all i cant seem to help but think the Mosaics is the thing that made people not get the game even if it is reduced :[ . Maybe when ef the first tale and later get a hard copy sometime in the future it might do better.

I don’t know if ef – the first tale didn’t sell well due to the minor censorship but I wouldn’t have bought it anyway even if it was completely uncensored. The censorship doesn’t explain all, some people may simply not be interested in Minori’s games (At least it’s my case, same with most of Key’s games) or they simply wanted to wait for a bundle with ef – the latter tale before buying it. As for the mosaics I fear I might be in the minority but I really don’t care about them, I think I even prefer to have them than not having them and it wouldn’t in anyway be something that would stop me from buying a game that like (after all beside mosaics the games are uncensored so I really couldn’t care less as long as the rest of the game hasn’t been censored).

I’m sad to see that Harem Party found its way into the Top 10. I’m reading this visual novel right now and I have to say that while it has a few redeeming qualities, all in all it’s sub-par (and infuriatingly sexist).
I’m happy that Deardrops is No. 4, that’s a great VN. Haven’t read any of the other novels, but I’m sure that ef doesn’t deserve the No. 10 slot.

Please include the Top 10 sales list in future End of the Year updates, it’s quite interesting.

Oh, and btw: Congratulations for the good partnership you seem to have with softhouse-seal!
Sure, their games might not be masterpieces, but it’s great to see that a company other than OVERDRIVE thinks that they can make a good profit of the Western market.
I hope you are going to sign more contracts like the one you have with softhouse in 2013 😀

I think with the exception of Boob Wars and Magical Teacher I’m quite satisfied with the rankings.
Not really troubled by the low ranking of Ef. From the five stories in Ef, the two in the First Tale are by far the worst (IMHO). Though, I know the stories from the Latter Tale only from the anime. But the First Tale VN was pretty close to the anime stories, therefore I expect the same for the Latter Tale VN.

Well, I’m not a tragedy fan either, but the characters in the first tale are kind of lacking.
Though, to be perfectly honest, Yuuko is the only character I really care about in Ef. And unfortunatley she got the most depressing story of the whole VN :-(.
It might be different if Ef wouldn’t be just a collection of remotely connected short stories and the main characters of each story more or less thrown away after each story ends.

I’m a bit surprised that Dengeki Stryker sold better than Deardrops. There seemed to be more of a “buzz” around Deardrops, though since I was really psyched about that one (and not DS) my perspective could be skewed.

Indeed, I wonder why it didn’t do so well. I hope this doesn’t mean MG will give up on that genre of visual novels, as it’s the one I like the most, and Kara no Shoujo in particular is just absolutely brilliant. I’d purchase Cartagra and Kara no Shoujo 2 day 1 were it to be localized. Same for Remember 11, wink wink.

If you’re that obsessed over the voice issue (which is neither company’s fault, I might add), there is a widely known standalone voice patch that doesn’t require pirating the full game : P. Geez. Still illegal but at least you’re supporting the official release…

I didn’t buy Kara no Shojo because I don’t like depressing stories that’s all. I’m ok when there is a bit of depressing stuff in a story but I don’t like it when I finished reading a story and end up feeling like hanging myself because of how depressing the story was.

“ef -the first tale. had minor sells because of the little mosaics u.u”

The game didnt sell super great because its a 2006 title and most of the interested parties either already played the patch version back in 2010 and/or watched the anime. A physical edition release would have helped increase sales of the title, who knows we might get a complete edition physical release when the first and later tales gets released in english…

The game didnt sell super great because its a 2006 title and most of the interested parties either already played the patch version back in 2010 and/or watched the anime.
The guilty as for the patched version??????What a naive thought u.u

I don’t ever recall MG or Jast marketing their titles on a good scale with greater returns in sales than the norm. Boob wars did well with zero marketing did it not?

There could really be only two possible guesses. The Fan patch and the keeping of mosaic. The hype and tail turn on MG blog was also ridiculously childish when mosaic was announced to be “reduced.” Many were angered like kids cause they didn’t get their uncensored porn…..dawns on the realization that sex sells….boob wars did so much better if I recall.

“I don’t ever recall MG or Jast marketing their titles on a good scale with greater returns in sales than the norm. Boob wars did well with zero marketing did it not?”

Exactly, what marketing? They release titles on their website and from there people choose what to buy. Really, marketing… you are confusing a multibillion dollar corporation like Electonic Arts with a localization company that publish hentai games for an international niche fringe of the population outside of Japan.